That's because it delves into something quite near and dear to
us: chess.

Rogoff, it turns out, achieved grandmaster level at an early age,
and even moved to Sarajevo, since Yugoslavia at the time was such
a chess powerhouse (#2 after the Soviet Union).

Ultimately, though, he decided to give up chess in favor of
economics.

Why?

I ask whether it was hard to switch from chess to economics?
Rogoff confirms that it was. He says chess people find it
difficult to move on, because the game is so addictive. But at
graduate school he became convinced that dividing his attention
meant that both his chess and his economics were suffering. He
had to make a decision. Once he had chosen economics, he had to
deal with his chess compulsion. “Being very good at
anything involves being somewhat addicted – so part of
my strategy of moving on was to give it up completely. I don’t
play chess casually ... Not unless it’s incredibly rude to
decline playing.”